Duane Morris Class Action Review - 2023 - Report - Page 108
impaired person other than herself visited the defendant’s website, other than
extrapolated survey data, which was too speculative and flawed. Id. at *7. The court
recognized that Rule 23(a) can be satisfied through statistics and census data, but
“does require more than guesswork.” Id. at *8. The court also deemed the
representation of the plaintiff’s counsel inadequate where several procedural,
evidentiary, and legal requirements were “overlooked…to the detriment of the proposed
class.” Id. at *9. Since the basic Rule 23 prerequisites were not met, the court denied
class certification without prejudice. Id.
Finally, in Davis, et al. v. Laboratory Corp. Of American Holdings, 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS
96130 (C.D. Cal. May 23, 2022), the court held that the plaintiffs were entitled to class
certification, since there was a likelihood that the defendant LabCorp’s kiosks created
difficulty for legally blind individuals, and certification of a nationwide injunctive class
was appropriate. The plaintiffs alleged violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act,
California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act, California’s Disabled Person’s Act, Section 504 of
the Rehabilitation Act, and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, with classes
divided into a putative California class, and a separate nationwide injunctive class. The
essential allegations involved failure to provide an equal opportunity to participate and
benefit from LabCorp’s healthcare services because kiosks did not have necessary
technology to enter any personal information for self-check-in to ensure the same
degree or privacy afforded to others without visual impairments. Id. at *2. Addressing
Rule 23’s requirements, the court held that numerosity was satisfied based on the
analysis of the plaintiffs’ expert that there were at least 87,500 legally blind class
members nationwide and over 8,000 class members in California, and evidence of over
60 customer complaints. Id. at *9. The court also held that commonality was satisfied
based on various common questions, including whether LabCorp’s kiosks are
independently accessible to legally-blind individuals. Id. at *12. As to typicality, the court
noted that the named class representatives were legally blind and sought to represent
individuals like them who experienced allegedly inaccessible kiosks at LabCorp, which
was sufficient under the permissive standard applied. Id. at *13-15. The court also
extensively analyzed LabCorp’s contention that predominance was undermined under
Rule 23(b) based on individualized damages and issues experienced. The court
rejected those arguments in determining that common questions of fact and law
predominated. Id. at *22-34. Accordingly, the court certified both the nationwide
injunctive class and the California class. Id. at *37.
I.
Rulings On Civil Rights Consent Decrees
Often civil rights class actions are resolved with agreed upon consent decrees, which a
court reviews and approves to resolve the litigation. Depending on the remedies,
sometimes it can include outside consent decree monitors, as well as obligations for the
defendants to submit compliance reports to the court.
One of the most famous civil rights consent decrees – known as the “Shakman decree”
– contained many of those attributes. It stemmed from a lawsuit filed in 1969 in the U.S.
District Court for the Northern District of Ilinois that challenged political patronage
practices in Chicago in which government jobs were given to supporters of a politician
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Duane Morris Class Action Review – 2023
